Monday, October 08, 2012

The Things We Know--Week 5

“It’s easy to grin, when
your ship comes in and you’ve got the stock market beat;

But the man worthwhile is the man
that can smile when his shorts are too tight in the seat.”

Judge
Smails, at the christening of the Flying Wasp.

There’s no easy grinning in Cleveland
and no one’s ship is coming in. Pat Shurmur’s shorts are getting
awfully tight in the seat, too, as he watches with increasing
impatience as his quarterback makes stupid throws, his linebackers
miss tackles, his defensive secondary leaves opposing receivers
running free and the rest of his players walk around, hands on hips,
wondering why they can’t be free agents at season’s end. And as
Shurmur looks out over the horizon here’s what he really sees: 11
straight losses under his watch, an 0-5 mark this season, the very
real possibility of this team going 0-16 and the increasingly greater
chance that the first phase of his head coaching career will last as
long as the second phase of Eric Managini’s head coaching career,
if he’s lucky.

What we know definitively after an
embarrassing loss to the New York Football Giants is that the Browns
are the worst team in the NFL. We know that for simple reasons like
the fact that they are the only team without a win this season. We
also know it for the more complex reasons like the fact that the
general manager figured it might be an interesting experiment to see
how repurposing the roster to the equivalent of a minor league
baseball team will work in the NFL. No credible franchise sends a
team into a NFL season where most of the players have one year or
less of experience. If you want to know why knowledgeable NFL types
shake their heads at Cleveland, that is the reason.

I consistently hear fans who want to
believe, just have to believe, that the Browns are working their way
through the forest and that Heckert has put this team on the right
track. But this team is demonstrably worse in so many ways than even
last year’s miserable team that it’s getting harder and harder to
defend Heckert.

He drafted Trent Richardson but that
was because he failed to make the trade to secure Robert Griffin III,
a player whose mere presence would have added legitimate hope to the
team. Richardson is a nice player, makes some nice runs, but even
Heckert has to have noticed that it’s far easier to get to an elite
level in this league with a transformational quarterback than a
big-time running back. Adrian Peterson wasn’t moving the needle
that much for the Vikings, which is why they were so vested first in
Brett Favre and now Christian Ponder (a younger Brandon Weeden).

I get on this rant after seeing a game
like Sunday’s because as much as these losses seem to teach us the
same lessons, it’s as if the Browns’ management can’t grasp the
concepts.

Which is why Shurmur’s shorts are
getting so tight. He knows this isn’t going well and that he and
the team stand perilously close to their own fiscal cliff. A loss to
the Bengals next week and it will be clear to everyone, including the
new man in town, that Cleveland hasn’t seen a runaway train of this
magnitude since the days of Chris Palmer.

Did you notice how Shurmur took on
Weeden for that miserable game-turning interception near the end of
the first half? Or maybe Shurmur was referring to Weeden’s other
game-turning interception early in the fourth quarter when he said,
essentially, that it’s time to stop using “Weeden is a rookie”
as an excuse for not making good football decisions.

And I agree with Shurmur but then I
also remember that Shurmur put Weeden in a position to fail, at least
on that first interception. It was 3rd and 1 and
Richardson was running effectively enough so naturally Shurmur
decided that rather than go toe-to-toe with the Giants for two downs
in order to get one yard he’d have Weeden throw the ball. If
Shurmur didn’t see that interception coming then he was the only
one. The 14-year-old son of my girlfriend, a kid who is a Giants fan
and knows nothing about the Browns, said matter of factly before the
play turned into a disaster, “I can’t believe they would throw
here. It will probably get intercepted.” Uh, yea.

Shurmur’s rather prickly response to
being questioned about another questionable game-day call “we have
to either run or throw here so we threw” or something to that
effect. He didn't back off that assessment a day later. Frankly, as
long as he was giving up why not just take a knee and then have Phil
Dawson kick a field goal? But more to the point, why not at least
look like you’re going to maybe run by keeping Richardson in the
game? When Richardson trotted off the field and Chris Ogbonnoya ran
on to the field, the ball already was intercepted.

In context, Weeden isn’t playing like
he’s the worst quarterback or even the worst rookie quarterback in
the league. The interceptions, either one of them, were killers and
they both resulted because Weeden made bad plays. But the reason the
Browns are so lousy in the first place is that there is virtually no
support system in place. The team lacks the kind of players that can
help lift others up when it gets rough.

Let’s contrast for a moment, shall
we, the Browns/Giants game against a nearly identical game taking
place in Indianapolis. They were almost parallel games. The
Packers were the best team last season and they were taking on last
year’s worst team. The Giants, the Super Bowl champs, were doing
similarly, taking on the second or third worst team from last year.
Both were obvious mismatches. The Browns got off to the fast start
they needed, took the MetLife Stadium crowd out of the game and then
folded before the two-minute warning of the first half. There was no
coming back. The Packers had an 18 point lead at halftime. There
was every reason for the Colts to fold. They didn’t. And then
when the Packers regained the lead, 27-22, with just over 4 minutes
remaining in the game, there was every reason for the Colts to fold
again. They didn’t. Instead Andrew Luck, with a major assist from
Reggie Wayne, played like a player with a pedigree, led his team on a
clock killing drive for the touchdown they needed (and the two-point
conversion) that ultimately gave them the victory.

Why can a team like the
Colts, so awful a year ago, rise up when the Browns fold as if they
had just been deal a 3 of spades and a 4 of diamonds in a game of
5-card stud? A big reason is that the Colts and Luck can rely on
someone like Reggie Wayne while the Browns and Weeden can rely on,
exactly who? Greg Little? Josh Gordon? Trent Richardson? Ben
Watson?

When people talk about
the Browns’ lack of depth, that’s exactly what they’re talking
about. For a team to win it has to be able to go to the well for
someone who has been there, won’t panic and will carry the rookies
through the tough spots. But when Heckert gutted the team the way he
did, he also eliminated that possibility and that, more than
anything, is why the Browns lost. They also lost because they suck.

**

If Greg Little thinks
this past week was an anomaly in his developing career, he ought to
think again. The Browns had two receivers out and Weeden still
basically refused to throw a ball to Little. His role was to act as
a decoy which was about the only job he’s capable of doing at this
point.

I loved Weeden’s quote
when he said that Little had a great week of practice and that not
throwing to him was just how it worked out. Yea, it’s exactly how
it worked out. Little has proven himself to be completely unreliable
as a receiver and while Weeden needs help in his decision-making and
badly needs a win, he’s at least mastered that part that says “just
because a guy’s out there doesn’t mean I have to throw to him.”

Indeed, the best way for
Weeden to master the art of going through the progression of receiver
options on every play is for Shurmur to call more plays designed
specifically for Little. It looked as though Weeden consistently
looked off Little in order to throw it someplace else. Maybe there
is hope.

Now the ball really is in
Little’s court. He’ll see far less throws and the few he does
see will be flavored with far more pressure for if he drops any of
those, his next step will be to hire Braylon Edwards’ agent and
find another team willing to take a flyer on a receiver that can’t
catch.

Don’t feel bad for
Little, though. There’s only so much energy a person has and
Little has decided that allocating most of it to establishing an
online persona via Twitter and creating self-aggrandizing post-catch
celebrations is far better for his brand. That’s left precious
little (which is actually a nice little ironic nickname for him)
energy to devote to developing receiving skills.

I really don’t think
Precious Little will ever amount to much in the NFL. He seems to
lack sufficient self-awareness to realize that it’s time to develop
the kind of work ethic needed to succeed in football or, really, in
life. Precious Little is never the last person off the practice
field but he should be. He doesn’t do one thing more than he’s
told to do and it shows.

**

The lingering thought
that I keep returning to about Sunday’s game was how competitive it
really wasn’t. The Giants were far superior coming in to the game
and the Browns, already a bad team when fully healthy, were missing
several starters anyway. When your starting lineup would at best be
back ups on most other teams, what does it say about your back ups?

Which brings us right
back to Buster Skrine. He couldn’t cover a hole in a wall with a
piece of plywood if you spotted him the hammer and the nails. It’s
stunning that of all the out of work and practice squad defensive
backs out there that there isn’t someone better than Skrine. Let
me rephrase that: it’s stunning that of all the out of work and
practice squad defensive backs out there, general manager Tom Heckert
continues to keep Skrine on the roster.

This is one you can’t
hang on Shurmur. He doesn’t have any authority over picking or
maintaining the final roster and apparently lacks sufficient clout or
credibility to force Heckert to do something about Skrine. The
Giants didn’t exactly have the full complement of their receivers
available to Eli Manning but it hardly mattered. I suspect Skrine
could even make Precious Little look like Victor Cruz and that’s
giving full credit to the 6 or 7 passes Little would drop on his way
to a 200+ receiving day against Skrine.

Shumrur isn’t doing
himself many favors with respect to coaching but he’s also being
undone by an inside job. At this point he’d be better off ordering
Dick Jauron to put an extra linebacker in coverage than continue to
throw Skine at opposing receivers and watch as those opposing
receivers laugh all the way to the end zone.

**

The final thing we know
about Sunday’s game is that the rest of the season should be stress
free. Not that there really ever were but certainly now there are no
must-win games on the schedule. Indeed and no matter what Shurmur or
anyone else associated with the Browns would tell you, this team
really is better off now losing any or all of the rest of their games
and ensuring themselves next year’s number one pick, which they can
immediately use on a quarterback whose not already older than half
the league.

I don’t know whether
Geno Smith or Matt Barkley is the next Andrew Luck but if the Browns
do end up with the number one pick, and for the life of me I don’t
know how they’ll blow it but I just know they will, it will be a
choice to make. And let’s hope that if Heckert is still around he
doesn’t try to ransom the pick like the St. Louis Rams did by
thinking that the Browns are set for the next 10 years at quarterback
with Weeden.

While this team can
always use picks, they need a franchise quarterback more than they
need anything else. Fourteen years into Browns 2.0 and this team
still has no identity. There hasn’t been on person from the owner
on down who the fans could honestly say represents what this team is
trying to accomplish.

Maybe Jimmy Haslam III
can be that person. To this point the spot is wide open and there
isn’t any line forming to fill that spot. Randy Lerner never
wanted it. Team president Mike Holmgren isn’t up to that task and
Heckert prefers the background. For now it falls to Shumur and he’s
got his hands so full just trying to get the players dressed for
Sunday that he’ll never find the time to take the spot. The vacuum
remains and that as much as anything is why this team can’t pull
itself out of its tailspin. No one wants to be the leader. They
also can’t because they suck.